I did some freelance work for Droga5 once and I have to say everything said in this film is one hundred percent true. This story is so touching and makes you realise this world ain’t such a bad place after all. Cue fuzzy feeling.

SPONSOR

D.O. Roth, the German video director who brought Joy Division back to life in a Playmobil animation, earning more than 600,000 YouTube viewers, has struck again. Last year, the internet came alive with talk of the legendary band’s 1979 TV performance of Transmission being performed by the toy figures.

Following success with his plastic versions of Ian Curtis and the acclaimed Factory Records band, Leipzig based film maker D.O. Roth has returned to music videos by working with Manchester band, The Slow Readers Club. Using the same arduous production process as before, Roth has made Playmobil versions of the band to perform in a perfectly observed, stop frame animation – complete with audience participation.

Building a miniature stage set in his apartment, Roth has painstakingly recreated the band’s performance of new single Feet On Fire by watching footage of the Manchester four-piece and recreating their every move. The end result of 100 hours hard work is a cute interpretation of the group’s otherwise brooding appearances, amazingly captured without ever meeting the band.

Roth says: “Over half a million people saw my Joy Division video and I got a great reaction, so it was great to work with a current band in the same way. The Slow Readers Club guitarist Kurt (Starkie) got in touch and we went from there. He sent me a description of the bands’ style, how they looked and how they dressed. With the information that he sent me I searched for the fitting miniatures and instruments and started to put them together.”

Here’s an interesting if somewhat off-putting video demonstrating how one can change one’s own physique drastically in just a few hours.

I’m not sure what kinds of substances Russians had access to in the waning days of the Soviet Union, but I want whatever the makers of the Fantadrom cartoon series were taking.

John D Boswell’s musical project Symphony of Science auto-tunes interviews of prominent science figures so we lesser beings can learn about science via song. This is one of these music videos.

SPONSOR

Here’s an inspiring story: eighty year-old Malcolm is a human rights activist, double amputee, and now skydives for justice. How wonderfully uplifting.

Keeping in line with fashion’s current Neon Surf trend, this clip shows a group of surfers wearing glowing wetsuits for a night ride at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

Now, this is one for the ages: back in 2010, Atlanta film-maker Walter Thompson created a jaw-dropping LEGO stop motion to propose to Nealey Dozier, his girlfriend of four years. The video took 22 hours of shooting and some 2,600 pictures to splice together, a small sacrifice to pay for years of happiness together. Right? Right! Oh, and she said yes. Bonus.

Here’s a Dallas native that completely crushes everywhere he goes, from Dallas to Detroit. He doesnt believe in one handed fills. It’s always two hands and a fat cap.

SPONSOR

Back in 2008, when I ran the Indie Music Video Festival, I was delighted to receive an exceptionally brilliant and weird music video called We All Belong To Our Before by Davide Di Silvio. So I was thrilled to discover his involvement with Canadian music videomaking team WeWereMonkeys, whose Land of Talk It’s Okay video is the stuff dreams are made of.

I’m glad when I play with my band, I never try to pull stupid, cliche, rock-star moves because I would probably end up screwing up like this dude.

This video makes me think: why the fuck are people considered extremists when all they want is to live a life fulfilling their genetic mandate of perpetual play, love, peace, and silliness? Why are people who no longer wish to be hard-working laborers, obedient cubical workers, and polite service providers for absolute strangers considered lazy, irresponsible, and even dangerous?

Why are we who oppose war and holocausts and inhuman violence considered unreasonable and degenerate? Tell me how to be a rational, sane, and loving human being while simultaneously not opposing the foundations of our civilization. People who still trust the inherent benevolence of this system I consider to be institutionalized automatons.

Hooked by the glamour of the city, the countryside is left behind. However, upon arrival, expectations are challenged by the sins of the city. This is a collaborative work of Nils Clauss from CONTENTed FILMS and Stuart Howe from STUDIO 163. This video, as the overall winner of the Genero Sincity competition, was chosen with the following comment: ‘Congratulations on a fantastic, original film that was entertaining from start to finish. A deserved winner’.

SPONSOR

Mound, Allison Schulnik’s latest stop motion animation, is drop-dead stunning. She makes a world full of hobo clowns, dwarfs, and witches come to life in a way that everything pulses and melt with color. She has such a fine touch, I could just sit and watch her characters breathe. But fortunately, we get to see them dance, play, and morph all over each other.

Safari is a collaboration between film director Denys Arcand and artist Adad Hannah produced for the exhibition Big Bang, which celebrates the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ 150th Anniversary and the opening of a new pavilion. Arcand and Hannah developed a 7-minute scene that takes place in the back of a nightclub in the middle of the 1980s.

A director from Los Angeles, Douglas Burgdorff’s work can be described as raw, morbid and shocking. You should be looking away and squirming like the first time you watched one of the ‘saw films’. The majority of it is not safe for work but this guy’s work is almost worth losing your job over.

From the sword that becomes a keytar, to the vivid rainbow hued jetstreams of the equally rainbow colored mechanical star steeds, this four minute tour de force from the Animation Workshop giddily tosses so many 80s concepts and cartoon icons and into a blender, it would be futile to attempt to list them all. Just watch.

SPONSOR

Five Production Company Logos in 3D sees Emile Zile standing around looking slightly bored in jeans and a hoodie in an empty space that could be an office-style set of ceiling fluoros. His own CGI studio. Incongruously, we hear a descending wall of sound mimicking perfectly the impressive zooms and sweeps of corporate and cinema company promos.

From hip height, we watch Ziles give us the accompanying 3D Graphics as his hands approach, recede, make clunky little chops in the air, respond to 60-Minutes-like ticking and cinema like aural morphings, and cut to the monumental ending, where Zile simply clicks his fingers. These gestures are both ridiculous and ordinary.

Five Production Company Logos In 3D presents an imaginary ‘real man’ behind these grandiose charades born of self-important declaration, where his hysterical hand movements replicate the gleaming chromed excessive overload of those corporate logos.

Filmmaker Peter Greenaway, who is best known for his controversial and visually lavish films, was recently a guest of Santiago a Mil Arts Festival in Chile. As part of the program, Greenaway presented a 90 minute live cinema experience on four screens, which was a mix of magnificent visual and aural chaos.

Greenaway was located on a small stage in the centre of a park opposite the Chile Government House, where he mixed and cut up his own evocative images with stock footage inspired by the life of the Welsh writer and perennial prisoner, Tulse Luper, who archived his entire life in 92 suitcases. Before the screening, Greenaway talked about his criticism of how cinema has not developed from its original platform and how it does not satisfy the imagination of the new iPad and laptop interactive generation. The films then began and on cue and a pack of street dogs howled and ran through the crowd throughout the performance, much like a scene out of one of Greenaway’s films, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

I’ve been a fan of This Is It Collective’s work since I saw their first video, Bad Things That Could Happen. This Is It is a collective of illustrators, animators, artists and designers based in London and they produce colourful, well-designed animations and videos. This one in particular made me snigger with joy.